Town Hall Annex to be razed

Work to be done by end of October

Recorder file/Paul Franz
The one-story Town Hall Annex building, which sits to the back of Veterans Memorial Mall on Main Street and once housed the police station, will come down beginning next week and become a temporary parking lot for town employees until the town decides what it wants to do there.

GREENFIELD — The town is a little more than a month away from demolishing the Town Hall Annex behind Town Hall.

The one-story building, which also sits to the back of Veterans Memorial Mall on Main Street and once housed the police station, will come down beginning in early October and become a temporary parking lot for town employees until the town decides what it wants to do there.

Asbestos has already been removed from the building, and lead left behind in the former police station’s shooting range will be removed from the lower level of the building when it is razed.

Central Maintenance Manager George VanDelinder said the demolition should take three to four weeks.

Mayor William Martin has talked in the past about eventually building a new, “green” two- or three-story municipal office building in place of the annex, but no official discussions have begun at this point.

The parking lots behind the annex will remain, according to VanDelinder.

Last year, the town approved $50,000 for asbestos removal and $40,000 for demolition. The mayor worked with town departments over the past few years to get them out of the annex and relocated them in other municipal buildings. Human Resources, town inspectors and veterans services were all relocated.

The 40-year-old annex was home to Greenfield police until 1999, when the department moved into the former Kaiser Permanente building on High Street.